Gottheimer, Democrats watching vicious GOP primary fight with glee

In North Jersey’s 5th Congressional District, Republican candidate Steve Lonegan — a deeply conservative former small-town mayor who has run unsuccessfully for a number of higher offices — is attacking his GOP rival, John McCann, as a “phony Republican” with a “patronage position” who doesn’t pay his taxes.

McCann — a former councilman in the Bergen County borough of Cresskill, who until recently worked as a lawyer in the office of the Republican-turned-Democrat Bergen County sheriff — points out that President Donald Trump has called Lonegan a “loser” and says his opponent has a “problem with women.”

Story Continued Below

Watching all this with glee are New Jersey and national Democrats.

Lonegan and McCann are competing to take on Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a freshman Democrat who, under normal circumstances, would be considered vulnerable in the Republican-leaning 5th District, which includes parts of Bergen, Passaic, Warren and Sussex counties.

But while Gottheimer has taken pains to stay in the political center — de-emphasizing the “D” next to his name and his history as a speechwriter for BIll Clinton while building a big war chest — the Republicans are engaged in a bitter fight.

They’ll have to spend big money in their primary, which will leave them little room to move to the center in next year's general election — not that Lonegan would want to anyway. And it appears Lonegan, who has a penchant for saying outrageous things and who has embraced the tax plan being pushed through Congress that’s likely to hit the most populous part of the district hard by limiting the state and local tax deduction, is the front-runner.

“I’m going to kick this guy’s head in,” Lonegan, who has lent his campaign $500,000 of the $600,000 it has raised, said of Gottheimer. “I’m going to run the most vicious, hard-hitting campaign this state’s ever seen because Josh Gottheimer’s a liberal Democrat who’s in the pocket of [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, voting with her every step of the way. He’s wrong for the district and I’m going to win.”

Lonegan, who served three terms as mayor of Bogota, in Bergen County, said he “barely knows” McCann, despite the fact their hometowns are seven miles apart. The two are the only candidates currently seeking the GOP nomination after Warren County Freeholder Jason Sarnoski, who had set up a campaign account, said last week he would not run.

McCann has gone after Lonegan in kind.

“Steve Lonegan has lost every single race running with the exact same kind of tone,” McCann said. “President Trump called him a loser and a nasty guy. It’s classic Lonegan because he’s never achieved anything in his political life. He has no record of success. Period.”

McCann also noted that Lonegan, who ran Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in New Jersey, tried to deny Trump the GOP nomination at the RNC last year.

Lonegan has set up a website called the “real John McCann” that attacks McCann’s record as a councilman, his work for the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office and for having about $140,000 in tax liens.

McCann said the tax liens had to do with his wife’s income as an obstetrician and were the result of complications from insurance payments. He said they were settled within months of him finding out about them.

“The tax liens were a problem and a fight we had with the IRS regarding my wife’s practice, and [Lonegan] knows that,” McCann said. “He always had a problem with women. He just disrespects women.”

McCann has taken more moderate positions than Lonegan. While Lonegan is strictly anti-abortion, McCann says he’s “personally pro-life” but demurs when asked if he would push for more restrictions on abortion, saying he would “enforce the laws as they are constituted.” Lonegan has also embraced the GOP tax plan, while McCann said “it’s bad for New Jerseyans as it’s currently written.”

Gottheimer joined the bipartisan “Problem Solvers Caucus” after being sworn in and on Tuesday put forward a proposal with Republican Rep. Leonard Lance to restore the state and local tax deduction to the GOP tax plan, the reduction of which could cost New Jerseyans thousands of dollars a year. At the same time, he’s been an aggressive fundraiser and has $2 million in the bank.

Democrats are expressing confidence about running against either Lonegan or McCann.

“From reaching across the aisle to solve problems, to working tirelessly to lower taxes and support our veterans and first responders, Representative Gottheimer is in strong position to defeat whomever emerges from this increasingly nasty GOP primary,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Evan Lukaske said in a statement. “This is truly a situation of heads we win, tails they lose.”

Political prognosticators tend to think Democrats are right.

The Cook Political Report rates the seat as “lean Democratic” while University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato ranks the district as “likely Democrat.” One publication, Inside Elections, rates it as a “toss-up.”

Dave Wasserman, House editor for the Cook Political Report and a New Jersey native, said the anti-Trump environment in New Jersey and Lonegan’s long record in New Jersey is likely a liability. Even though the district repeatedly reelected conservative Republican Scott Garrett before ousting him for Gottheimer, it’s more centrist than hard-line conservative. It's also become more competitive for Democrats after a 2011 redistricting.

“When the wind is at a party’s back, the party doesn’t lose many, if any, incumbents. The district has been trending away from Republicans even though it still voted for Donald Trump narrowly,” Wasserman said. “More critically, Lonegan is well-known to voters for mostly the wrong reasons.”

Trump won the district by 1 percentage point last year, but Gottheimer defeated the ultra-conservative Garrett by 3 points.

That was Gottheimer’s first-ever run for elected office. Lonegan, by contrast, has run for the House of Representatives twice, in two different districts — most recently in an unsuccessful Republican primary against MacArthur in 2014 for a then-open seat in South Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District. Lonegan has also run unsuccessfully for the GOP gubernatorial nomination twice, and lost a special Senate election to Democrat Cory Booker in 2013.

Over the years, Lonegan has made headlines for criticizing a McDonald’s for having a Spanish-language billboard and for trying to make English the official language of Bogota, but then allegedly hiring undocumented immigrants to assemble lawn signs for the New Jersey chapter of Americans for Prosperity, which he ran at the time.

During his campaign for Senate in 2013, Booker,then the mayor of Newark, exclaimed, “Oh my God!” when Lonegan said people couldn’t swim in the Passaic River because of “all the bodies floating around of shooting victims in your city.” Democrats have also pointed to a slew of other controversial Lonegan statements, including saying some 9/11 first responders “will find any reason to sue.”

Garrett, a 10-year incumbent, came from the deep red, northwestern part of the district, and some conservative leaders there — including state Sens. Michael Doherty and Steve Oroho and Assemblyman Parker Space, who made headlines for posing in front of a confederate flag — have endorsed Lonegan. However, the bulk of the voters in the 5th District live in the wealthy bedroom communities of Bergen County.

“This is a Republican district. Every race I’ve ever won it’s been a brutal battle. I’ve put my neck out there for the Republican Party whenever they needed me,” Lonegan said, noting that he won the district when he ran for Senate in 2013 — an extremely low-turnout election that took place on a Wednesday in October. “This is the most winnable race I’ve ever been in, hands down."